


I’m lonely so I do lonely things

by whitchry9



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [5]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Explosions, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Trapped, ya boy has emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 16:21:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19176961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitchry9/pseuds/whitchry9
Summary: Klaus hated being alone. So being trapped under a collapsed building in the aftermath of an explosion? Not his idea of a good time.





	I’m lonely so I do lonely things

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt- caught in an explosion.
> 
> Title is from a poem by Warsan Shire

“-aus! Klaus!”

Klaus groaned. Why was Ben trying to get him up? It was clearly too early, if the lack of light seeping through his eyelids was anything to go by. Why couldn’t a ghost just let a guy sleep? Especially a guy who was exhausted as Klaus was. He didn’t recall why he was so exhausted, but he felt it in all of his bones. God he had so many bones, and they were all aching and exhausted.

“Klaus wake up you asshole or I’m going to kill you myself.”

“Shut up Ben,” he tried to say, but his tongue was stuck to the side of his mouth and gritty, so he thought it came out more like “stutthen”, which didn’t mean anything. Probably. Klaus didn’t know all the languages, so it could mean something in a different language. Actually, it was very possible.

“Klaus, open your eyes,” Ben demanded.

Jesus, the guy was persistent.

Knowing he wasn’t going to get any peace until Ben was placated, Klaus heaved his eyelids open. He really needed to get more sleep.

 

Of course, opening his eyes really didn’t help, since his room was dark except for Ben glowing faintly blue, only half of him visible. Where did his other half go?

“Oh good,” Ben sighed. “You’re not dead.”

“Doesn’t stick,” Klaus pointed out, and his tongue was almost working so he figured Ben could understand at least most of the words.

Ben ignored that. “We need to get you out of here. What’s hurt?”

“Hurt?”

Ben stared at him. “Klaus. The explosion.”

 

As soon as Ben said it, Klaus experienced it all over again. It came in fragments. There’s the blast, the fire, the debris, the collapse. Oh god he’s stuck underneath a building. He was going to die here. Was he just going to come back? Die and come back, over and over until god finally stopped getting sick of him? Would it be endless? Was he going to spend eternity dying and undying in this coffin of a space, with his ghostly brother for company? Surely even Ben would get sick of that.

 

“Klaus! Where does it hurt?”

Ben’s voice pulled him back to the present, where he wasn’t dead, and had the possibility of not being dead.

 

He thought about it. Everywhere hurt, which was probably because he’d been tossed around and had a building topple over on him.

 

But the pain built and localized in two spots.

“My head,” he said slowly. “And my leg.”

 

Ben nodded. “Okay. But you’re awake and you make sense, so you’re probably not going to die in the next few minutes of some sort of brain injury, so we can push that aside for now. Which leg?”

 

Klaus shuffled up a bit. The space he was lying in didn’t let him sit up completely, which was why only half of Ben’s body was present, the other half quite literally sitting in some concrete, but he could get into enough of a sitting position that he could see his legs.

And the rebar that was sticking out of the left one.

 

He might have passed out a bit.

 

“Klaus,” Ben said. “Come on Klaus.”

 

God, would his brother ever stop being annoying?

Klaus found his hand, helpfully still located at the end of his arm, and gave Ben the finger. Or he tried to anyway, he got very tired halfway through.

 

“Come on Klaus, don’t be like that. We need to get you out of here. Your leg is bleeding. Not a lot, probably because the pole is stopping the bleeding, but you still need a hospital. Plus you keep passing out and that’s kind of concerning for a head injury.”

“Well then Casper me out of here or whatever,” Klaus huffed. His brain felt like a grape that Luther was squeezing between two fingers. Sooner or later it would burst. And then become wine!

Or something.

“You have to do that. You know I can’t.” Ben crouched down closer to him. “Listen, they’re looking for you. All of them. Diego has a broken arm, and Vanya will need stitches, but they all refuse to go to the hospital until they find you. If you can make me corporeal, I can tell them where you are, Five can come in and get you, and we can be out of here in no time.”

 

“But the wine,” he said, and then realized it made no sense, but his head hurt and the air was thick with dust and probably like, vapourized people and whatever else explosions made. Ew. That was going in his lungs. Klaus didn’t even want to think about the consequences of that, except he was, so…

 

“Klaus. They won’t find you in time otherwise.”

 

And well, shit. There’s the tea.

Maybe he’d come back after he died, but maybe he wouldn’t. But this way he had a chance and didn’t have to go see the rude little girl who might be god.

 

But Klaus would be alone, maybe even at the end, and there was a reason he filled his life with people, alive, _breathing_ ones, and that was so he didn’t have to be alone. Not with himself, and not with the ghosts.

 

“Don’t leave me,” he pleaded.

Something in Ben’s face shifted. “I don’t want to. But if you make me corporeal while we’re both in here, I could hurt you. Plus I wouldn’t be able to get help.”

“Right,” Klaus whispered. That made sense. But it didn’t make it any easier. As soon as Ben left, he would be alone in the dark. _In the mausoleum._

“We will get you out of here,” Ben told him firmly. “Even if I have to tear the building off you piece by piece, we will get you out.”

“I mean at least get Luther to do some of the heavy lifting,” Klaus mumbled.

Ben smiled. “Of course.”

 

“I don’t know if I can do it,” he blurted out. “It hurts.”

“I know,” Ben said softly. “But I also know how strong you are. Stronger than Luther even.”

“Pft, obviously.”

“Okay. I’m going to go out there. Wait a few seconds, and then try to make me corporeal, okay?”

Klaus nodded, hitting his head against the concrete pillow it was resting on.

 

“Shit,” he hissed, which made him cough, which made the pain in his leg spike as the spasms made him shift.

 

“Oh Klaus. It’s okay. Just breathe,” Ben coached. “Maybe don’t nod anymore?” he suggested.

Klaus cracked a smile at that. “Yeah, good call.”

Ben waited a few seconds. “Are you ready to give it a go?” he asked.

“It’s hard,” Klaus said, and there were tears in his eyes that Ben kindly didn’t mention.

He placed a hand on Klaus’s shoulder, or at least where it would be if they occupied the same space.

“You got this,” Ben told him, and then vanished.

 

It was pitch black. Klaus did not think about the mausoleum, did not think about how he could spend the rest of time dying and undying in this tiny box.

 

He focused and he focused and he focused and then-

 

_Pop._

* * *

 

Klaus blinked awake to find his family staring at him intently. His left leg was propped up on a pillow, wrapped in white.

Ben was there.

“Did I die?” he whispered. “No, _I_ see the ghosts, not you guys.” He frowned. “I think.”

 

“You’re not dead,” Vanya assured him. There was a line of neat stitches along her hairline. They looked like they’d started to heal already. How long was he out for?

 

Diego was asleep in a chair at his bedside, arm in a cast, drooling slightly. Luther looked untouched, of course, the lucky bastard. Five looked exhausted, probably from bouncing around looking for him, and Klaus felt a bit guilty about that.

 

“Ben came to get us,” Luther told him. “That was terrifying, for him to appear when you weren’t there.”

“He was there,” Five corrected. “Just under about four feet of concrete and rebar.”

“Do we really need to bring that up right now?” Diego hissed, apparently awake now, wiping the drool from his face and looking slightly embarrassed.

“And then I popped in and got you,” Five continued as though Diego had never spoken.

“There was a lot of blood,” Allison added, looking pale.

“Yeah, I don’t think Five really accounted for what would happen when he teleported you out of them but left the rebar behind,” Vanya admitted. “Not that it was his fault, just. None of us expected it.”

 

Klaus hummed as the discussion turned into a fight, with Five hissing about physics and something that Klaus didn’t even hear, honestly his brain just made a static noise when he said it, and Luther talking about how he didn’t want to move the concrete around in case he put it on top of Klaus, and Diego talking about how he was the one who made sure Klaus didn’t bleed to death, and blah blah blah. Klaus let it just wash over him, the not being alone, the light. The life.

 

He made eye contact with Ben and grinned.


End file.
